Title: The Same Place
Series: The Lamb and the Lion: Book Two
Author: Gregory Ashe
Publisher: Self-Published
Length: 443 Pages
Category: Mystery
At a Glance: Every single thing is served to perfection in The Same Place. It goes without saying, but I’ll say it anyway, I never expected anything less.
Rating: 5 Stars
Reviewed By: Lisa
Blurb: For what seems like the first time in Teancum Leon’s life, things are looking good: he’s put an end to the toxic relationship with his former sex buddy, work is going well, and Jem Berger has officially decided they are best friends—in spite of Tean’s objections. Things are looking good for Jem too, although he’s not thrilled that somehow Tean has talked him into getting a real job. Everything changes, though, when Tean’s friend Hannah asks for help: she’s being followed, she tells them, and she thinks she’s might be in danger.
After Jem and Tean spend a weekend tailing Hannah, trying to catch her stalker, they make two unpleasant discoveries. First, Hannah is right that she is being followed. Second, she isn’t being stalked. She’s being watched by the police, who are interested in Hannah’s connection to a missing person investigation. And the detective in charge is none other than Ammon Young, Tean’s former friend and ex-sex buddy.
Tean and Jem’s search for the missing woman leads them to a body. The cause of death is a mystery, but one thing is clear: someone wanted the remains destroyed. Tean believes it was homicide, and so do the police.
When Hannah is arrested for the murder, Tean and Jem must race to prove her innocence. But everyone seems to be lying, including Hannah, and she’s willing to take her secrets with her to prison—or to the grave. The answer may lie with the animal teeth marks on the victim’s remains. Good thing Jem knows a wildlife vet.
Review: At this point, I have nothing original left to say about Gregory Ashe’s writing. Compelling, taut, emotionally fraught, evocative, provocative, and explosive are a few superlatives that come to mind, and they each apply to his entire body of work. He never shies away from writing about the grittier underbelly of human nature or the commonalities of the human condition, as painful as they may be. Perhaps the most stark and brilliant commentary Ashe makes, however, is through the characters he creates, in the way they are hurt, scarred, scared, flawed, sometimes feral, often remarkable, always proving resilient, and how, despite the incredible odds against them, they get their happily-ever-after, which makes it all the more satisfying when they do. We see in them despair and tragedy but also hope and trust, support and love, faith and compassion; sometimes we witness these things through broad gestures, sometimes through small and subtle offerings, in both words and deeds.
Each and every step in the process to Ashe’s characters overcoming adversity is hard-earned and, ultimately, satisfying—not in spite of the odds against them but because of the odds against them. Teancum Leon and Jem Berger are textbook examples of the sorts of people who inhabit this author’s imagination, but they’re far from being mere regurgitations of the characters who’ve come before them. One of the significant differences for Tean and Jem is that they’ve brought nothing of a shared past into their relationship. Readers meet them for the first time as they are meeting for the first time, with no pre-conceived notions brought into the encounter but with plenty of first impressions to work through, especially on Tean’s part, as they teamed up to solve a murder.
The “opposites attract” trope has rarely been used more effectively, or more poignantly, or finessed more plausibly than in this series. Jem’s past figures into who he is, in a prominent and significant way, but the miracle is that he is not one of those irredeemable lost souls who often becomes the antagonist of the story. Jem is imperfect and is all the more lovable for those imperfections. His hurts hurt in a way that make him a survivor, and his tenacity and street-smarts empower him to play the perfect partner to the more reserved Tean, who’s fighting his own battles.
Family plays a role in The Same Place, for both Tean and Jem, but in significantly different ways. Of course, family can be both a blessing and a curse, but family is nothing but a curse in this book. There is a vast difference between being accepted and being tolerated, and then there’s the aftermath of being nominally tolerated. Tean’s family are a mixed bag of outright homophobes and barely restrained homophobes, which, along with his Mormon upbringing, has informed his self-perceptions and left him functional—barely—at best. Jem comes through as Tean’s most ardent supporter, though, and there may be a chance for Tean to repay that support to Jem in the next book.
In the meantime, there is something new, something fragile, and something special that’s happening between them. Tean making one of the most romantic gestures, a gesture that was also an incredible sacrifice, I’ve ever read is the best worst thing I’ve ever had the pleasure to cry over. A sacrifice that I hope is only temporary. If I know anything about a Gregory Ashe book, I can also predict with a fair amount of certainty that there will be more emotional landmines to come before Tean and Jem find their way to a new beginning.
As always, the setting, the details that don’t feel like teaching moments but are so well-researched and written that learning something new can’t be helped, and the mystery are all served to perfection. It goes without saying, but I’ll say it anyway, I never expected anything less.
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